Dabija looks at death the way he looks at life – or history marked by wars or haunted by the spectre of Communism – with lucid detachment, with crude and aggressive, up to visceral humour. The vividness of Vişniec’s text feeds the voluptuousness of its grotesque and gives him an extra reason to prove the absurd of an existence in which we shall all inevitably step into.

Requiem marks the border between history and memory, where death appears to be impersonated by the Dead for their Homeland – worthy or unworthy – expressly claiming their rights to march at the homecoming parade. The direct dialogue, devoid of subtleties, one might say, but which so elusively filters out the meaning of the catchwords, the oscillation between lyrical frailty and cruelty, but also the dose of raw humour from Ada Milea’s songs are rendering Requiem a parable filled with wit and irony about war, death and the „life” in it.

« […] Requiem is … a burst of laughter and crying, as the history of human suffering is tightly interwoven with the absurd, the grotesque and even stupidity.

I thank Alexandru Dabija, because he has approached these words and has let himself stirred and inspired by them. I have been waiting for a long time for this encounter with Alexandru Dabija – an artist of subtle energies for whom I could write day and night, and, for that matter, the text of the Requiem has gained nuances and has replenished after the start of the rehearsals.

On my path as a playwright, laid out on over four decades, the encounter with the National Theatre of Bucharest is pivotal. I remember my teenage years, when I was entering this theatre as a temple, fascinated by its actors and by what was happening on its stages. I have nourished myself a lot, in my youth, from the performances of the Bucharest National Theatre, and the idea that now I could hear my own words on one of its new stages fills me with nostalgia and excitement, it is as if my life started all over again. » Matei Vişniec

Translated by Simona Nichiteanu